


Dog with no tags

by Tarot (oldsneakers)



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Drug Addiction, F/M, Homophobia, Italian Mafia, M/M, Organized Crime, Other, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:04:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldsneakers/pseuds/Tarot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yet another origin story for Jigen Daisuke! Scattered scenes beginning in New York in the early Fifties. Will later reference a few of the series' canon specials, and silly side characters like "Chad" and "Max."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dog with no tags

**Author's Note:**

> me: lol, why would anyone want to take lupin iii seriously?  
> me: *writes grimdark fanfiction* 9_6

"Jigen" is not his first name. Neither, of course, is "Daisuke." But he likes these best; better than the rest. _The Life and Crimes of Jigen Daisuke_ \-- he'd read that. He'd read it twice, sure. Except for the parts with That Woman.

*

He knows this woman is what he wants. But his pulse only races when prodded, and his line of sight slips, again and again, from her pastel slightness to the knife-in-jacket brackets of other arms around her. A good, clean suit over clean, sharp bones. His hand twitches, crumpled on its side against the honeyed glow of cheap scotch. The glass sweats, and ice cubes cough. He swallows.

*

The study's well lit, open but-- drawn somehow; very near and very dear, as one keeps one's friends and one's enemies. It smells of his cigarettes.

"Sit. Please."

He does, complimenting his host's posture with studied nonchalance. Amid the many microaggressions of polite conversation, he's surprised to see the other man's smile. A moment in silence, and gone.

" _Ascoltami, paisan_ : I have a cat. He catches all my mice. No squeaking, so I sleep well. Do I care if this cat is orange, or _stripe_ ; if he is black, unlucky; if he likes tea instead of cream, and chases stray dogs all night?"

Chad, six-foot-something to his five-foot-three, had him half off his feet by the collar before this, saying--

"No," his host supplies. "But I don't want to hear him -- how do you say -- 'what the cat dragged in,' this? I do not care. I do not care to know. _Capisci_?"

"...Yes, Boss. _Capisco_."

*

The painted girls of the tenderloin territory ooze by him, meat melting beneath a brilliant festival of lights. Some coo and peck at his upturned coat, but most do not see him. They are all so soft, so soft... He grips one especially eager girl's wrist as he would a gun, and ducks around her. "No. _Non questa sera_ \-- not tonight."

Her unfamiliar face turns flat and sharp, and its sweet mouth cuts. "I knew it," she sighs. "Only queers clean up that nice." She is pretty in her short dress and high heels, and looks down on him. "That hat." She laughs.

He has a certain temper.

*

The furthest wall of the apartment-- a kaleidsecope of cockroaches, awhirl at his arrival. Vinegar, resin. Brine and burnt sugar. His head ( _his_ \-- _heart_ \--), his stomach-- 

" _Vai in chiesa_ ," the command issued from bedsheets boiling and bloated with bad-smelling flesh.

" _You_ go to church!"

He leaves money. The night is cold, and the sun yet set. He half turns on the stairwell, goes to check the lock, and tells himself he won't be back.

*

In October of 1970, Congress passes the RICO Act. He is twenty-three years old and has made more than enough bones to buy friendship. But men don't shake his hand. He knows. The day they do'll be his dying day, and the Devil's red right hand is hot upon his knee.

So he compromises, and buys a plane ticket to Africa.

*

Four years bowed beneath the Horsemen's yoke make him home to many monsters: Famine, long-necked and gibbering, stores soot in his breast pocket with his bullets and eats when his gun does; War rattles at his shoulder, rasping into his ear, in his own voice, the same thing again and again, night after night; Pestilence glistens blackly in his lungs-- in phlegm, in sputum; in Death.

*

The fields fail, and fill with corpses. The sun drowns. The big bomber's wing ignites and it explodes on the runway. The new crew bickers over coffee while he peels yams.


End file.
